


world so cold

by bountifulsilences



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Depression, Emotional Hurt, M/M, Post-Captain America: The First Avenger, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, suicide ideation, that's basically it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 09:32:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18443810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bountifulsilences/pseuds/bountifulsilences
Summary: When all is said, and all is done, what remains? A list of regrets, a handful of wishes, and an infestation of misery. Out of the billions on the planet, he had been struck with a special kind of lightning and that left him how he was: slowly burning to death in every breath.or, a study on Steve Rogers as he assimilates into the 21st century.





	world so cold

**Author's Note:**

> I was rereading something my friend wrote for me years ago and she played around with this kind of writing and I...needed to try it? not gonna lie, this isn't half bad, it's kinda good. which is high praise for me when I say it to myself. 
> 
> edited by me and it sucks, yall should know that by now. hope you enjoy it though !!
> 
> if I missed any tags or something needs a tag/warning let me know please!!

The sky was a painter’s dream.

A dream that could only be encapsulated from the mind and delivered to the word. A concoction so brilliant and unimaginable, only unconscious rambles could conceive it.

The mind's eye observed. Peered at the miserable grey that loomed over the world, inhaled the scent of despair that reeked from his freshly sewn body, and hummed- no, sang the tune of heartache that played continuously inside his ears. This world couldn’t hurt him, the eye learnt that quickly.

So, the nightmare arose as it always did: splashes of colour and shrieks of mirth imploding like fireworks around him. The grass hummed, soft to touch and smoother than ice, and his fingers dug deep into the roots, grasping the branches of life from the ground. It was all at his mercy.

It would progress how he expected it to. White smiles, boyish laughter’s, taunts and teases, and fingers combing through his but never slotting in place. The jigsaw pieces had never seen completion, they were incomplete like him. He knew this was the path the neurons of pain would skate through, saw the conspirators in his iris promise to. But it would catch him by surprise, nonetheless.

His nightmares weren’t haunted by torrential waves of water, they were cursed with brown hair and a familiar face. Outlined in chalk, promising to fade away at the slightest hint of rain. As faithless as the hands that couldn’t catch him as he was slammed into the jaws of death.

Quietly, Steve wished the Valkyrie visited him more often. The pain was kinder.

The sunlight was coercion, assuming the beauty of his fondest memories, it was a demand- an order to understand that this was what his life had become. From the loyal laughs and the tickled nose, to the permanence of a suit and a nod instead of a word. He had lost nothing. But he had lost everything.

His hands had once provided for him, careful strokes against newspapers and leaflets of images that crossed the plains of reality and fabrication. The visions he sees when his eyes shut, locking for the night and despairing him to himself, they were once his favourite indulgence. Oftentimes, during the summer where the boxed room ran hot and the walls melted like wax, they’d usher each other to the park and would lay in the sun, sketchbook and pencils in hand.

His greatest creations, his formidable dreams of joy, had now become a punishment his mind tormented him with. Tossed his fragile body into the pool with sharks, expecting him to be torn apart like he should be. But he never was. Survival was a burden, and he carried half of the world’s lifeline in his heart.

Steve Rogers was forced to confront his losses, his loneliness and his desires, in sequences of recollections that the serum would never let him forget. The optimum human body, that’s what his once deteriorating shell had become, but also a perfectly disguised torture chamber that spun a web of unshakable afflictions, surrendering his body to the world and to his mind. The serum had taken away his strength and made him into the weakling he had always despised.

The weakling who had the unconditional love of Bucky Barnes, and who probably would not have soared past the age of 30. Thinking back at that number now, he can’t say that would be a bad thing. Months out of the ice, decades out of time, eons since he last saw his loved ones. To have not met some, and to have lived in vast happiness with others, would have been a privilege. One that was too late to check in.

He was late for everything, and his tardiness transported him here: a magnificent hell. He truly didn’t have the words to speak.

When all is said, and all is done, what remains? A list of regrets, a handful of wishes, and an infestation of misery. Out of the billions on the planet, he had been struck with a special kind of lightning and that left him how he was: slowly burning to death in every breath.

 

* * * *

 

The demons he housed were bountiful, masterminds of destruction that fed on the soul which withered in his chest. An entity unhinged, one foot in the present and the other lurking in the shadows of the past. His body lingered in between the two, playing Captain when it was expected of him and the mantle descended from orders above, whilst also losing himself in the steps his skinny legs once took, paths that littered pieces of all he had lost in the route.

Fury told him to choose from the two, single eye raised and anticipatory, that he couldn’t live in the limbo he had created. The past had no room for the living, he would say, and Steve would chuckle. For he wasn’t living, not really, the man who he was and the man he had been in the past were both gone. He was just as dead as mountains that consumed Bucky in his fall.

Someone once recited “the life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living,” that their remembrance was an echo of words that would pulsate rapidly when triggered. The royal pathways of the brain worked quickly and wickedly, a perfect tyrant that chose mercy when the wounds it afflicted were too painful to bear. But it was clear to the future, to the reluctantly accepted present, that no soul truly died, not so soon. They thrived for days or months in the minds of the soul they impressed or oppressed. Legacies leaning one way or another.

How he tampered with the gears of time and become an exception was not forgone to him, in fact, it was all he could think of. On missions, events, funerals and the corridors of a Smithsonian which hailed him as a glorified war hero ( _killed in action_ \- no, _survivor_ ). He was an anomaly, a cursed result which didn’t conform to the scientist’s results, but fascinated them, nonetheless. Anomalous data could possibly answer the hypothesis, they marvelled when they saw him, eyes twinkling with their interest.

He already knew the answer, and it coursed through him as a metallic river stained with a gift he could never return. Why return it anyway?

This road he travelled on, the one which separated him from reality and thrust a shield with a logo into his grasp- he wanted it. Did he forget? No, he didn’t. Couldn’t, not anymore.

The thing was, and this was something Steve occasionally sputtered when the desperation and the loss magnified his sorrow to become infinitely large and imposing, the road- no, the future was cold. So very cold. Its arms wore sleeves of ice that hugged him tight and possessively, malice bracketing his body. And the full moon he had briefly turned to when his eyes opened, the game from ‘37 playing- the game he watched with. With Bucky. When he listened to the words, confusion dripping into his stream and sedating the contentment, the full moon was soon eclipsed by a red shadow that left an imprint.

A mark on the craters that left a signature of someone and something he didn't yet know existed. SHIELD owned him long before the attack on New York. Fury had been waiting for Steve to come to him rather than what Steve expected. And like a dog looking for a new owner, a soldier with no purpose or war, he ran to the first shelter he found, reason awaiting him.

But the world was so cold, colder than the ice that trapped him, colder than the trenches when the sun had abandoned them for weeks, and colder than the cells they found people barely clutching onto life. They had melted him, he saw the footage, and yet the ice remained. He fought with fists against an armada of bullets and he kept the gun to his head, hoping someone else would pull the trigger.

Tony, out of everyone, said to him after too many drinks and an aggrieved smile sprayed on his lips, looking out of place yet completely at home, “death. Death isn’t the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we still live.”

And exposed, a stigma without the petals surrounding it to distract the eyes of pollinators, Steve had silently stared at him. Sober, aching and empty. A shell with no soul. His greatest loss had been himself. And both the Valkyrie and the world stole it from him. Pried it out of his fists and threw it off the train when he voyaged through the alps.

Nobody spoke a word after the declaration. There was nothing left to say.

He lived. A picture of patriarchy, righteousness and selflessness: an embodiment of all things noble on the earth. But the visage of captain America was no longer the ‘A’ which happened to be stitched onto his helmet, now it was the face of Steve Rogers. Hard lines, edges sharp enough to cut but lips that yearned for the love they had lost. He didn’t own his own body, and when that pin dropped, he smiled.

Smiled viciously at himself as he spoke to the news reporters and journalists interrogating him to no avail. He was their puppet. At their will. Oh, the future was a thief. A disloyal and calloused child of his period and he had no escape, no choice but to live in it. Let it take all he was, all he had left to hold; soon the world would have a skeleton to bury with his name written across the ribs. The ribs which God used to make the human race. They would reclaim his identity, since he couldn’t mourn the loss of the deceased.

If he tried, he would never stop. And there was no break for him. Now, it was time to work.

“You’ve slept for a long time, Captain. Let’s test those limbs, shall we?”

 

* * * *

 

The mirrors conspired with Janus, manipulation and deception oozing from the glass as an abhorrent warning. Do not look at them, they’re treacherous creations of deceit.

He ignored the warnings and did anyway. Religiously, obsessive, compulsive. The comforting horrors the window showed sated the brute that banged against the cell walls and rattled the chains constantly, eager to abscond captivity. Steve couldn’t have that. The barbarian remains locked.

But the mirrors, they were the analgesic that it needed, a paradoxical type of medicine he could choose to understand but desired not to. Learning about himself, regardless of how small and insignificant the information was, it distressed him. Sent his nerves awry because why wasn’t the source of the data inside him where it should be? Where was he? Consolingly, he murmured, dead. He was dead and that was exactly where he wanted to be.

When he wore the suit that calmed the nation, blue, stripped and fitted across his muscles immaculately, he saw a symbol of power in the reflection. Keened at the man who stood tall, held his chin high and contained no misery in his eyes. The man, a saviour and a survivor and a token of dominance, stared back at him. It wasn’t the serum which gave him what he wanted, it had always been the red, white and blue stripes. The constrictive garments which choked him. He nodded.

But when the day was over and the mission successfully complete, the suit was forcefully removed, and he saw the man he used to be. A coward, runt, loser. The true form of his soul. His skin was pale, as white as the angels that sang praises of the Lord in heaven, but with none of the virtue or purity. Cracked and broken, as though the statue that commemorates Steve Rogers was slowly decaying in the corrosive battles of venomous rain. Brittle and ashy, he was floating away, deterioration emphasised by the lack of life in his eyes.

Degeneration didn’t occur at the cost of losing the serum, no it was by his very own demise, and that thrilled the brute. Die die die, it chanted amongst the four walls, laughing hysterically at it owns downfall.

Don’t worry, he told it calmly, our journey here was never permanent to begin with.

Finish what the Valkyrie should have taken care of, it replied.

I will, Steve vowed, we will join the sinners of war like we should.

Soon enough, the universe takes back what it is owed. And for him, it was Steve Rogers. He didn’t belong to the living, his destiny always resided with the dead.

 

* * * *

 

“Steve! Steve, go long!” Bucky shouted kindly; ball ready to be projected across the length of the park.

From the floor where his sketchbook was slowly detailing the face of the dork in front of him, Steve rolled his eyes. “Allergies, you idiot. I’m not going to run and make myself ill, hell no. Get someone else to play with you.”

The brunette looked at him, amazed and delighted and dropped the ball, leaning over as he bellowed a laugh. The sound was contagious, it had to be, because Steve stopped his movement and chuckled, shaking his head.

“You’re an asshole, Rogers,” Bucky told him, grinning as the mirth pivoted around him, drenching him in elation. “I just want to spend some time with my best guy and here you are, rejecting me like the stone hearted sonofabitch that you are.”

Shrugging, the smile still playing at his lips, he replied, “one day you’re gonna get the beating of a lifetime for running your mouth like that and you wanna know what I’ll be doing?” Bucky raised an eyebrow. “I’ll be cheering them on, someone’s gotta teach you a lesson and it won’t be me.”

Walking over to him, Steve observed the grass sigh beneath Bucky’s footsteps and noticed the way the air grew lighter the closer he came. Sighing, he waited patiently. Fingers floating behind him and gravitating to the grass, gently, he squeezed.

“Why not, you scared?” he asked Steve, pausing in front of him and distracting the sun.

Steve shook his head. Stretching his arm, he laid his fingers bare to Bucky and requested, “help me up.” Tenderly, a soft palm slotted against his, and clasped onto Steve in utmost dedication. In a declaration of strength, they urged him to his feet, pencils and book tumbling onto the field.

“Gonna go long?” Bucky asked, still holding his hand as Steve feigned stabilizing himself.

Looking into Bucky’s eyes, grinning brighter than the sun beating down on them, he nodded and whispered, “go long.”

The returning beam injected Steve with infinity. “I’m going long.”

That moment could only be encapsulated from the mind and delivered to the word. A concoction so brilliant and unimaginable, only unconscious rambles could conceive it. That’s what the day felt like.

His nightmares were ingenious composers, and this was the greatest orchestra of all time. A final play before the night was over.

He wasn’t sure he’d live long enough to hear the end of the symphony.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr:  bountifulsilences   
> twitter:  AwestruckBuck 
> 
> (ps. the two quotes about death I got them of google and they definitely do not belong to me)


End file.
